Over the past two decades, media ownership has consolidated at such a rate
that currently seven conglomerates account for nearly all the media produced
in the world. They are Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, Disney, Viacom,
Universal Vivendi, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, and AOL/TimeWarner. These transnational
conglomerates are the prime motivators in the push toward corporate globalization.
Worldwide, they see teenagers as the next frontier to be conquered (Dretzin
& Goodman 2001). That is because globally, teenagers total 560 million
in number and annually spend $100 billion dollars (Moses 2000). They are
the largest generation of teenagers ever to exist with the most income at
their disposal (Dretzin & Goodman 2001). The volume of their current
purchases combined with their future spending potential makes this group
of teens the most sought after consumer demographic in history. As such,
there is a feeding frenzy among these media conglomerates to get a share
of this global teen market.
While the global scope of the current teen market is a relatively recent
development, the concept of selling merchandise to teenagers is nothing
new. Teenagers were first recognized as a distinct segment of the American
consumer population in the 1950s. The surging post-war economy combined
with the Baby Boom to produce an enormous population of teenagers with an
unprecedented disposable income. The media industries capitalized on this
and produced what is arguably the first youth culture product: rock and
roll. Rock and roll’s impact was immediate. It informed nearly every
facet of teenage life, from hairstyle and fashion to language and sexual
expression. Never before had big business had so thorough an impact on the
cultural development of such a young population. And so was born the youth
culture industry (Frank 1997).
Since then the stock in trade of the youth culture industry has been the
selling of “cool” as a commodity. The problem this poses to
the media conglomerates is that what is considered cool is always changing.
Today’s fashion is tomorrow’s cultural trash. To combat this
upward curve, the media giants hire specialized marketing agencies devoted
to analyzing the teen consumer. These marketers have developed tactics designed
to infiltrate the innermost sanctum of teen culture (Gladwell 2000). Their
tactics are not dissimilar to the ones utilized by the CIA and FBI in their
intelligence gathering: spying and surveillance (Garfinkel 2000).
Marketing agencies regularly employ teenagers to spy on other teenagers.
Their job is to document with video cameras, still cameras, and tape recorders
the thoughts, attitudes, fears and hopes of their peers. In short, they
are “culture spies,” hired to inform marketers of every subtle
nuance of teen expression (Dretzin & Goodman 2001). The media conglomerates
use this information to craft sales strategies designed to penetrate every
facet of teen culture, including movies, music, video games, magazines,
books, DVDs, and the Internet. In this way, they are better able to leverage
their cultural influence on teens by selling and promoting their products
via all of their varied media divisions simultaneously (Dretzin & Goodman
2001).
This cross-promotional free-for-all is extremely effective at maximizing
profits, but what effect does it have on the teenage consumer? Does it leave
any room for them to actively participate in the production of their own
culture? And if so, how exactly does it inform what they produce?
The CultureSpy.com Web site is the result of a study that attempted to answer
these questions. The study was a yearlong critical participatory action
research case study conducted with teenage collaborators from the Chicago
area. During the course of the study, the participants collected cultural
data on their peers using the same type of culture spy surveillance techniques
used by teen correspondents working undercover for marketing agencies. From
this data, the participants formulated a profile of contemporary teen culture.
The participants then compared their profile of teen culture with representations
of teen culture presented in popular media texts marketed specifically to
teenagers, including movies, television shows, commercials, magazines, catalogs,
Web sites, etc. The participants expressed their findings in commentaries
produced in the media forms they were critiquing: video, audio, photography,
and digital graphics. These commentaries form the content of the CultureSpy.com
Web site for teenagers.
This portion of the Web site is designed to assist educators in the development
and implementation of “marketing literacy” curricula in their
classrooms. Unlike media literacy studies that usually focus on media critiques
and production practices, marketing literacy curricula mandates that students
critique the entire commercial media process, from market analysis to production
to distribution. This process engages the students in an active methodology
that removes them from the passive role to which they are accustomed as
media consumers. In essence, they become guerilla video ethnographers, marketing
analysts, producers, and distributors. Ultimately they are forced to look
at teenagers in the third person, as a demographic to be researched and
analyzed. Then they can fully achieve a level of critical self-awareness
that is crucial to preserving their cultural autonomy.
References
Dretzin, R. & Goodman, B. (Producers), & Goodman, B. (Director).
(2001). The merchants of cool {Videotape}. Boston, MA: WGBH Educational
Foundation, distributed by PBS Video.
Frank, T.C. (1997). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture,
and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Garfinkel, S. (2000). Database nation. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly &
Associates, Inc.
Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big
difference. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Moses, E. (2000). The $100 billion dollar allowance: Accessing the global
teen market. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
